Is global warming a scam?

Note though that the last question isn't phrased right. The right question should be - would anyone deny or doubt that global warming is safe from disastrous consequences?

A spokesman added: "The winter to come will undoubtedly have cold periods and some snow, but saying exactly when these will affect certain parts of the country we believe is still not possible beyond five to 10 days."

I like that one from the BBC weather office. "No not snow in winter".

So we will just make an educated guess and wager a theory that says temps will rise by 6degrees till 2100 when we cant even predict 10 days?

I hope u dont listen to your stockbroker thats telling u u cant lose in stocks cause they keep going up.

Note though that statement could be improved and rephrased as "A right question could be..."

I'll address the remark about the ice core data here. I suppose all of you have seen the graphs that show varying CO2, CH4 levels and the exact correlation with temperatures. Water vapour, which has a greater greenhouse effect is not measured in the ice core data. Some questions:
1. Which gas CO2 or CH4 is responsible for global warming?
This has implications because the human activity that causes CH4(methane) production is agriculture and CO2 production is primarily related to industrial activity. So this is important for establishing which kind of activities should be eliminated/reduced for reducing Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming.
2. Why are both gases varying exactly with temperatures? Human activities generating these gases have changed(meaning the relative production of these 2 gases has changed as well), so why do the ice core data show the level of both gases varying exactly with temperatures?
3. What causes pre-historic variation in CO2 and CH4 levels?
4.If the level of CO2 and CH4 are correlated to the temperature, what is the causality?
A=High levels of CO2 andB=high levels of CH4, C=High temperatures
Does A cause C or B cause C or C cause A and B or does D cause all three?
Higher temperatures lead to less gases being dissolved in the oceans and greater atmospheric concentrations of all gases that are dissolved in the oceans.
5. If A (or B ) does cause C, then why isn't the correlation exact, temperatures should be rising faster than they are
6. If higher CO2 and CH4 levels ARE responsible for higher temperatures, then why is there a direct correlation between the former and the latter, without a time lag? because to contribute to warming, higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere, do not immediately increase temperatures, but are dependent on the Sun's heating and retaining that heat, which requires a time lag between the two.

Some relevant articles Meyer (2007) Skeptical layman's guide to Anthropogenic global warming PDF

Caillon, Severinghaus, Jouzel, et al PDF suggests that the "CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 +/- 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation" @adrian t, this one is from Science, peer reviewed enough for you? As are plenty of other articles questioning AGW, but i doubt you would need any of those to form your own conclusions

The inconvenient truth about the Ice core Carbon Dioxide Temperature Correlations

CO2 vs temperature: ice core correlation & lag

Right, my point is that the important thing is not whether there's a chance Global Warming Truth can be wrong, but whether there's a chance it might be right. Sort of like Pascal's wager, but without the invisible sky wizard.

Well yes, let's leave god aside and call it precautionary principle, in short "the lack of certainty regarding the threat should not be used as an excuse to do nothing to avert that threat"

I haven't seen an Inconvenient Truth.
Just to be clear about this, assuming your ideas about global warming being a myth are true, does that mean you would be happy to see the world carry on driving 4 litre gas guzzlers and burning fossil fuels to provide power? Because what you are condoning is the continued unsustainable exploitation of the planets natural resources.

Can't one be sceptical about the causes, yet still be active in working against the threat? (few will dispute that conserving non-renewable energy sources is a bad thing)

And by the way, what are all you highly educated and vocal folks actually DOING about it all, in addition to exhaling lots of CO2 and apparently contributing even more to the problem?

Once again, there is a difference between good intentions and good science. You think my skepticism makes me into an eco-monster, so does that mean that if I unquestioningly believed in Anthropogenic Global Warming, i would be automatically environmentally conscious? I think Bipa makes a very good point


The problem with an uncritical belief in linear, simplistic models of global warming are many. The two major ones in my opinion are that it diverts resources and diverts attention from other more relevant, more achievable solutions.
Solid waste disposal, sanitation, clean drinking water, are all unglamorous, but have more empirical evidence to support them. Yet Al Gore wouldn't bother to campaign for water-less toilets, or subsidies for providing sanitation.
Also this focus on this huge threat, which is hardly understood, leads to several other not so nice outcomes. Post-chernobyl europe wasn't a place where nuclear energy would have been thought of as desirable. But in a warming globe, nuclear energy is profitable and desirable.

@makkadman: the journal paper you link to doesn't argue against anthropogenic causes of climate change. I'm not debating against you, just pointing out that scientific consensus disagrees with you, and therefore so do I. If you think your argument is valid, seek publication.

My question was directed at makkadman as he was the one that started this idiotic discussion. I would also be interested to know where he gained his 'knowledge', I know there is a contingent of professional scientists who remain sceptical about climate change, but I can't imagine many real environmental scientists would be wasting their time writing on forums like this one, so I seriously doubt he has a good enough understanding of the subject to be objective. Besides, sceptical climate change scientists are increasingly seen as people who are on the fringes of rational thought.
Free thinking is all very well, but with free thinking has to come a sense of responsibility.

Well you managed to avoid answering my question, well done. Once again, do you think it is acceptable to drive 4 litre engined cars and continue to burn fossil fuels in power stations?
I didn't call you an eco monster, but you need to answer this one.

The knowledge is in front of you and as easily accessible to you. You have not managed to counter any of my objections to AGW and you think I am on the fringes of rational thought!

odel I empathize with you and on the environment we probably share many concerns. Yet, i do not form my conclusions based on their desirability. AGW is a myth and i doubt reducing CO2 emissions is going to have the "desired" consequences of cooling the earth.

No i think it is absolutely unacceptable to drive 4 litre engined cars and continue to burn fossil fuels in power stations, I use public transportation and have never even applied for a driver's licence to avoid the temptation of driving a car

Scientific consensus is a misnomer: it's not part of the scientific method. Arguments should be based on evidence alone or they aren't scientific.

You have not provided conclusive irrefutable data to prove that as an unquestionable fact.

Given that AGW proponents are the ones who want us to throw away the basis of developed societies (and stop undeveloped societies from developing), they should be the ones providing irrefutable proof, surely?

Sorry, I missed your post. I believe you are talking about Caillon et al (2007). The paper suggests that CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglaciation by 800 +/- 200 years, therefore questioning the causality between CO2 concentration and global average temperatures. You are right that it isn't about anthropogenic CO2

Hilarious! and you have provided...what?

You haven't either answered or refuted even a single one of my objections to AGW, do i take it you are in agreement?

The ignorance here is breathtaking. How many times does it need to be pointed out to you that weather and climate are two completely different things?


You make a fair point. I personally believe that individuals can make a small difference in the choices that they make, and I attempt to do my bit. For example, I do not own a car and I happily travel by train up to about six hours before I consider flying. Plus of course the usual energy-saving lightbulbs, switching off lights, turning down the heating etc. But I don't claim to undertake these measures on purely environmental grounds – I prefer the comfort of the train to the stress of flying, and I save money by switching off lights.

Without wishing to push responsibility elsewhere, I do look to governments to provide the solution to climate change. There are always going to be some poor bastards who, for whatever reason, feel that flying from Frankfurt to Munich is somehow superior to taking the train. I look to governments to tax these flights out of the sky. And of course industry is the largest polluter, so government intervention is required at that level as well.

Your ignorance is breathtaking too. Climate is defined by the IPCC (International panel on climate change) as,


in simple terms, "the weather averaged over long times, typically 30 years, all of which makes Mapleleafdude's objection quite reasonable.

Of course Complex systems do not have a "mean", so using a concept of an average or mean weather, ie; the climate is itself questionable.

What have I provided?

My unquestionable fact: The mainstream international scientific opinion leans towards AWG
My expressed opinion: the lack of certainty regarding the threat should not be used as an excuse to do nothing to avert that threat

Your absolutist statement: AGW is a myth.

You cannot back your statement with proofs. The maximum you did was to rise some doubts, far away from proving a myth... Interestingly, the title you yourself wrote was only asking. I fix it for you.

Hilarious? I prefer Monty Python.

the title questions whether AGW is a scam, nowhere does it mention that it is not a myth, as you yourself agree

Science is not a beauty pageant with whoever gets most votes becoming the global heartthrob, so the "mainstream international scientific opinion" is a load of crap

If I could back it with proofs, I would have gotten that $40million research grant, and i wouldn't be posting my arguments here. I would be writing my acceptance speech for the Nobel

You have yet to prove it is a myth, as you ascertain.

There we agree.

But if you cannot prove it stop presenting it as an unquestionable fact.
Title goes back to questioning.

@Sinderbox

Scam n. A fraudulent business scheme; a swindle.

Myth n. A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.

Title- Scam?
Post- Myth.
hope this helps

I have dictionaries myself,
NONE of them define Myth as "half-truth". what is your source?

Stop being so tedious and get better dictionaries, the source is:

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000

It would help all sides of the argument if you didnt keep insulting each other with petty name calling. It gets in the way of the discussion

All right, no more insults or helpful offers of dictionaries from me

Webster?

But it doesn't matter. As long as it becomes clear that you are not presenting AGW as "an unfounded or false notion" (most common use of myth) but as a partial truth. I can live with the second.

I think this demonstrates the problem most of us "underdeveloped" folks have living behind the moon. This discussion in general is more religous than fact based since we dont even know all factors that contribute to the climate and the ones we "know" about we can only imagine what impact they really have.

I think alot of people are missing the point that most folks here that dont take manmade climate change as a given, still see the point in using cars without gas and power from re-new energy.

It`s just this cult thing that bothers me and everyone who is a non-believer must be burned( )at the stake.

Your most ignorant TT'er

I will now go and buy Oranges from Florida,Grapes from Spain,Lampchops fromNZ,Shark fins from Japan...see you later

You cannot judge change in the weather in such a short time. In the last 1.000 years we havs had hot and cool periods. What caused them ?

What happened to all the doom and gloom about the hole in the atmosphere. Remember !!. The hole healed up.

The BBC report was hidden in its site. If it had been the other way round it would have been headlines on its front page. Why is this?

Take all this gloom and doom with a pinch of salt.

It helps if you follow the discussion. There's a reason the ozone layer is healing: it's because we stopped pumping into the air the chemical that was depleting the ozone. It's like magic! And a wake-up call for anyone who stills thinks mankind can't alter the climate.

Here's the thing I don't get. The IPCC is a United Nations body and is composed of the leading scientists in the field. After twenty years of research, they reach a conclusion to a 95% confidence level – and then people who know almost nothing about the subject stand up and say "I think you're wrong".

Why is this? Nowhere else in science does this happen. Mapleleafdude doesn't lie on the operating table in the hospital telling the surgeon he's doing it all wrong. Makkadman doesn't start threads about how scientists are mistaken about gravity. It will never cease to amaze me how people with such low levels of knowledge about a subject can be so convinced that the leading experts in this field are wrong. It really is quite breathtakingly arrogant.

Except the ones that didn't agree with the dogma which needed to be proved, and then promptly got shown the way out. Their names were still used as "some of the leading scientists" who backed the study though, despite some of them explicitly forbidding this.


No, they're just agreeing with the other, more convincing arguments coming from other sides of the debate (that's right, the side you tend not to hear from because of their suppression, by economic means, at the hands of the majority). We've debated this on this forum before, the fact that you think that holding other opinions based on different interpretation of the data is stupid, non-scientific, blasphemy, or whatever, is a good piece of evidence to how dogmatic and cult-impressed you are.

Scientists are never sure about anything. Well, good scientists aren't.


But sometimes the surgeon does fuck things up, now, doesn't he? Sometimes the gravity scientists do get it wrong, crashing things instead of landing them on Mars. Besides, there are other experts in the field that don't back the AGW Truth cult completely, why are they necessarily wrong?

Yeah..but who you are isn't what you know. There was a time when 99.9 % of doctors "knew" that cauterizing amputations was better than the "rubbish" idea of suturing the blood vessels shut instead. They also "knew" that it wasn't necessary to wash their hands after dissections and before attending to births. Experts can be wrong. The entire scope of human knowledge is just a mote in the eye of the almighty. It's no crime or arrogance to be unconvinced when the evidence is contradictory.

This is a classic!
so which scientist should i start a thread about? There are plenty of them who may have been mistaken, Newton's theories on gravity have been demonstrated to be a special case, but i doubt you have yet heard about it. Einstein? Space-time curvature may be responsible for gravitational attraction, if general theory of relativity is correct, but we are not sure yet (I have no doubt you are, though). Gravitons have been theorized but not proven, so quantum mechanics may or may not be able to explain gravity.

Aristotle, Le Sage, Brahmagupta, Newton, Einstein, Moffat, Sakharov, Bekenstein... all of them leading scientists, yet none of them would claim that their word on gravity was the final word. But you obviously know what gravity is, breathtaking arrogance indeed!

Science is not the same as being a deadhead groupie, you don't vaguely hear of something like AGW and decide on its absolute accuracy, when most of its proponents themselves have understandably contradictory theories. This is not the Bible theory of creation, where faith is by itself adequate, and any contrary opinion is blasphemous.

well I am a scientis and in my field there are a few areas where there is a consensus view that prevails due to multiply replicated results from a wide variety of sources all coming to the same conclusion. Contrary to what some people have been saying, it is actually not THAT uncommon.

The IPCC should demonstrate that there is pretty much a consensus view on these matters.

However at the same time there is a LOT of money, from the US government, oil firms and others with a lot to lose if there is international political agreement on climate change, paying for 'scientists' to go public with dissenting views.

Some of these are bogus scientists. Some of them are eccentrics willing to accept cash.I know that some people have alleged that scientists are being intimidated. As far as I can see the only unbiassed study showed that scientists in the USA were being pressurised by the US government to oppose climate change theories.

We had 3 hot years and people concluded that it was global warming. Now that we have had cooler years it turns out that temperatures have not risen globaly since 1998 so says Mr Jarraud of The World Meteorological Organisation as reported by Roger Harrabin of the BBC on 04.04.08. This shows that so called global warming has peaked.

I am off to fill my 4x4.

No it hasn't, it's mending as STB points out, but it won't be back to anything like it should be until 2070 according to the UN

the meteorologists who came up with the ideas around climate change did not do so because we had "three hot years"

By the way China is pumping out CFCs at at 10 times higher rate than all the rest of the world did before, and the ozone hole has closed.

We were told that the temp. would rise year on year and it is not, in fact it is falling and will fall again this year. These are the FACTS not predictions.

Come on people think for yourselves.

Where's the proof?

In case no one looked at this graph, you can see that there are regions where the three gasses aren't all correlated. E.g. at about 200 000 years the CO2 and the temperature go up, but not so much the methane. So probably both gasses contribute to the temperature (mainly CO2), as you would expect.

As for the proof of a 2-3 degree rise, it's obvious in this evidence:

Its about time that the developed nations really tackled piracy . The oceans of the world are dangerous enough without the added threat of being forced to walk the plank

actually, as you can see in the graph, we need to increase the number to pirates to around 20000 to reverse global warming. Its a tough balance between the piracy and climate change

Ermm am i the only one that kind of likes it being warmer?

So, apparently the world is gonna end in hundreds rather that thousands of millions of years.

And???

How does a man with an eyepatch , parrot on his shoulder and bottle of rum help to combat global warming ?

Global Temps have not risen since 1998. FACT.

China have just had the coldest winter for 500 years FACT

Where I live I can see NO evidence of warming.

As they say about weather forcasting. Never forget to look out of the window.

It is not proved that the warming cycle will continue the temp. is falling

Just look at the facts it is not happening.

Not in Norfok anyway.

By drinking rum instead of smoking a pipe, he reduces CO2 emissions, upholds the Kyoto protocol, cools down the earth and lives happily ever after...(Austrians start singing on the mountainside, rainbow with two dolphins jumping through it)